Post 485: 3–0 to the Arsenal and a big breakfast.
I’ve been struggling to stay awake lately, which is partly to do with sleep deprivation at night, but I’m beginning to think it might be something else.
What I mean is that even when I do get a good night’s sleep, I don’t get a more active day where I feel energised.
I still feel tired.
I can nod off anytime from midday right through to bedtime at around eleven.
I’ll be watching television with my Darling when it happens. I don’t feel it coming; I just fall asleep.
This can happen all afternoon and the only thing that seems to stop it is being active, standing up or walking around.
Even when I’m in company I’m much the same.
I still drift off to sleep.
It’s okay. I’m not in any danger or about to cause some kind of crisis, but it’s quite severe now and I’m starting to think there might be something wrong.
When I was going through chemo I was more likely to sleep during the day, which back then was unusual for me.
But the chemo finished about a year ago, so surely it can’t be associated with that.
Perhaps I should talk to the doctor.
The problem with talking to the doctor is that he’ll probably suggest it’s all to do with my sleep patterns.
But perhaps I should keep a sleep diary and give myself a chance to work out whether this really is sleep deprivation.
I’ll give it some thought.
I’m going out with an old school pal this afternoon.
It was supposed to be a creative writing meeting, but that’s been postponed until next month, so I had a free Monday and he wanted to meet up at the club in town that he’s a member of.
That should be fun.
A couple of beers and a load of waffle.
Ha ha.
Tomorrow my Darling goes back to work.
That will be a big test for her calf muscle.
She thinks she’s ready to go back and after eight weeks perhaps she should, but the jury’s still out.
Will nine hours, starting at 04:30, be a wonderful and easy return?
I doubt it.
My Darling has thought about little else lately than getting back to work and her pal at work will safeguard her every move.
Even so, it’s going to be hard on that first day.
The only advantage of going back on a Monday is that there’s no more work until Saturday, so she has plenty of time to rest before the three days in a row next weekend.
I just hope A&E is relatively quiet.
Some hope, I know.
But you never know.
Meanwhile, our eldest boy and his wife Kay were heading back to Wigton today.
So, to start them on their journey in a reasonably healthy way, we all went into town for a big breakfast.
We all chose what we fancied and I found myself sitting opposite my son with his full English.
It looked fabulous.
Especially the bacon.
I’d gone for a sausage and egg baguette without bacon.
I instantly regretted that decision when the food arrived.
Food envy!
When I saw the bacon on my eldest’s plate I realised it wasn’t some weedy-looking, rubbery, undercooked rasher.
It was a huge, beautifully cooked back-bacon slice of some considerable magnitude.
But as I bit into my own very nice baguette, I realised it probably would have been too much for me anyway.
So perhaps I made the right choice after all.
We all enjoyed the food and coffee and chatted non-stop.
It was lovely.
It’ll be the beginning of November before we pop up to the Borders and visit them, so it was a rather sad end to breakfast when we had to see them off.
They’ve got a long journey home, around ten hours in the end, with plenty of breaks for comfort and drinks.
It was great to see them.
But especially good to see Kay just before her thirtieth birthday and then the start of her radiotherapy, somewhere around the end of September.
We’re crossing our fingers that the non-Hodgkin lymphoma will be stopped in its tracks.
Fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, my favourite football team — as a lifelong armchair supporter — won the first match of the new season with a bit of silverware as well, in the shape of the Community Shield.
Well done, Arsenal!
I didn’t even watch it.
Mores the pity.
But I did get a text from an old work colleague telling me the three-nil scoreline.
Wow!
3–0.
That’ll do nicely.
As for the breathlessness, I’m still hovering around 94 on my own oximeter.
More importantly, I’m slightly out of breath lying in bed, even with my heart rate sitting at around 60 beats a minute.
So my thoughts about this fairly new symptom are simply to keep an eye on it.
I’m not in any panic yet.
But if that 94 drops any lower, or I get chest pains — unless I’m laughing my head off at QI on the television — I’ll make a quick call to A&E in the normal fashion.
I’ve also noticed that since coming off the steroids, I’m increasingly getting back pain and my legs aren’t as strong.
I don’t want to go back on the bloomin’ pills.
But it does seem likely that I’ll be on them again at some point soon.
The bone scan is on Tuesday and I’m looking forward to the phone-call report on September 3 from my oncologist, Dr S.
I’m not expecting anything to change much.
Hopefully I can continue with my not-so-active surveillance.
Up the incurables.
Sleep well.
And longer than me.
Take care.
